Self-Acceptance and Altruism : A Study of influence of Sex and SES among young Adults

Abstract

Altruism is a motive to increase another’s welfare without conscious regard for one’s self-interests, it is selfishness in reverse. Altruism can be explained psychologically by social-exchange theory, sociologically by social norms theory and biologically by evolutionary theory. (David Myers, 1990) Since altruism is associated with positive and negative personality factors like sense of well-being, positive emotional state and aggression respectively, this study is intended to find out whether an individual’s altruistic personality depends on his/her self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is the acceptance of self in spite of weaknesses or deficiencies and socio-economic status is an individual’s or his family’s economic and social position relative to others in the society. It was  intended to examine the impact of sex and socio economic status on self-acceptance and altruism. Self-acceptance inventory, altruism scale and SES scale were administered to seventy three young adults in the age range of 20-25 years, selected from two city colleges randomly. Data were analyzed using t test. Findings revealed that sex and SES did not have variable impact on self-acceptance and altruism.